Page:The Life and Work of Sir Jagadis C. Bose.djvu/19

5 not to be unknown in India), could not but exasperate the dacoits; and their fiercer spirits repeatedly organised attempts at reverse. One group, whom he had tried and sentenced, turned on him as they were being led away with the threat that 'when we get out, we will make the red horse fly.' Three or four years later they kept their word. One midnight the thatch of Mr. Bose's bungalow was set on fire from three or four corners, and the outhouses also were ablaze. Suddenly aroused from sleep by the crackling and smoke, the household could but rush out into the compound, without time to remove anything. The immediate neighbours, who as it happened were mostly Mahommedans, hastened to the rescue. One of them saw in the burning house a small figure, which in the smoke and firelight he mistook; he ran back to Mr. Bose, saying, 'You would not like us to touch your idol, but I think it can be saved.' 'Idol! I have no idol,—let me see!'—and here was the little daughter (afterwards Mrs. M. M. Bose), then aged only three, who in the scattered confusion of the family had not been missed, but was sitting on her bed, fascinated rather than terrified by the scene. The father rushed in, and carried the child out; and a moment after the roof fell in. Everything was lost; when the strong-box was extricated from the ruins, ornaments and money, gold, silver and copper were fused into a mass; and the horses and cows in the outhouses had perished. But one neighbour lent a part of his house, others lent clothing and cooking-vessels, and so the family encamped as best it could for a month or more, until a fresh house—this time prudently of substantial construction—was secured. The burned house had been Mr. Bose's own, so this severe loss was a beginning of the many misfortunes of his later career.

A year or two later, when the boy Jagadis was five or six. he recalls from a 'Mela' or popular fair, a wrestling match among the policemen, mostly big stalwart fellows from the North-Western Provinces, who practised much among